9/03 Links Part 2: Peace on paper is not peace on the ground, An open letter to the UNRWA

“We have very great tasks in light of what is occurring throughout our region both near and far. While they shoot at each other, we build for each other,” the Prime Minister said.“Our state is peaceful, certain of the strength of the IDF and sure in itself because it knows that it can defend itself. I will not allow anyone to harm the State of Israel. I ask you to go out and enjoy the holiday [Rosh Hashana, Jewish New Year] and if someone thinks of harming the tranquility of the holiday, he knows what awaits him,” he said.

In a visit to the headquarters of the Shin Bet, which is headed by Yoram Cohen, Netanyahu thanked the agents for their tireless work in preventing terror attacks, singling out their latest achievement in apprehending a Ramallah-based Hamas cell that was planning to attack shoppers in Jerusalem's Mamilla mall."These accomplishments can be felt in the meaningful reduction of the number of deaths from terror in recent years,” he said. “No one can guarantee that this quiet will be maintained, but the Shin Bet and security services are prepared to continue to defend the citizens of Israel from every threat.”

On the evening of Friday August 30th an explosive device was detonated near an Israeli army patrol jeep on the border with the Gaza Strip. No injuries were sustained.On the morning of Monday September 2nd two more explosive devices were detonated near an IDF patrol along the same border, fortunately with no injuries caused.On Sunday, September 1st the Israeli security services announced that a plan to carry out a terror attack in the Mamilla shopping mall in Jerusalem had been foiled. None of the above is apparently considered newsworthy by the BBC.

Pro-Palestinian organizations have launched a European advertising campaign calling for the release of five Arab youths who are suspected of throwing rocks at a car six months ago, causing grievous head injuries to Adelle Biton, a Jewish three-year-old.In a large scale rally in London last Friday, protesters called for the release of the “the Hares boys,” as they are now known. The five youths are from the village of Hares in Samaria, near Ariel. The central message in rally was that the youths are being held “for no reason,” because of “an accident they had nothing to do with.”

Dear UNRWA: Congratulations! Whereas most other refugee services go out of business just a few years after any war, you’ve not only managed to keep your jobs but also to make your organization, your budget and your payroll grow exponentially for over 64 years. This is an astounding and unprecedented world record! The key to your unparalleled success is also the reason for which I am writing to you. In virtually all other refugee cases, the goal of the altruistic assistance agencies was and is to help the persons displaced by war and violence to be absorbed into a new country. Why? To establish a new home, to get on with their lives, and to guarantee a brighter future for their children. What a stupid mistake!Within only a few years, these agencies and NGOs resolve all the problems of resettling these refugees, thus putting themselves out of their tax-free jobs. What kind of business plan is that?!

Despite a 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan signed by the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein, this agreement has yet to be put in effect in the hearts of the people of the neighboring countries.As a Jordanian, I was taught in school and at university that Israel is our first and last enemy. Why is this? People in Jordan (and almost all Arabs in the Middle East) think that Israel seeks to destroy them. It is common to hear conspiracy theories asserting that the decisions by governments of the United States, Russia and Europe that have adversely affected Arab countries can all be traced back to the Jews. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that if we stop Israel, or expel them from the Middle East, our situation will be better.

Under pressure from his own party’s opposition to “normalization” with Israel, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday canceled a meeting with Israeli Knesset members who had formed a caucus to support the recently revived peace talks. Normally, this would call the whole point of peace talks into question: Someone too scared of the anti-normalization thugs to host a meaningless gabfest with Israeli MKs isn’t likely to have the guts to sign a final-status agreement containing real Palestinian concessions. But in this case, anyone paying attention to Palestinian behavior since the talks began already knew they were nothing but a farce.The following are just a few of the steps Palestinians have taken over the last month to prove their lack of desire for peace:

“These days, we are discovering what a difficult neighborhood we are living in," Bennett said at the Bayit Yehudi party's ceremonial toast for the new Hebrew year (Rosh Hashana) in Modiin, which was held in the presence of Chief Rabbi David Lau, members of the party's Knesset faction, and 700 Bayit Yehudi delegates and candidates in municipal lists.“There is one place that is an island of stability – the state of Israel in the Land of Israel. This is the only place where there is peace. I am amazed by the bottomless fanaticism with which followers of the 'religion of peace' want to give our enemies parts of the country," he said.

This tribal and sectarian dispute, which has the potential to become the Muslim equivalent of the Thirty Years War, has about as much to do with Israel as did the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. And the peoples involved care very little, if at all, about the fate of the Palestinians – certainly much less than do Nigel Kennedy and Roger Waters.Yet some western governments still fall for the bizarre idea that if the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians were to be sorted, then this would help to solve all the other conflicts in the region. Thus the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius declared last week, following a meeting with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas: “The Israeli-Palestinian issue is …perhaps the central issue of the region.”

MEMRI: Rabbi Yahya Youssuf Salem, Head of Jewish Community in Yemen, Talks of Segregation and Persecution

Approximately one in five "flagged" job applicants to the US's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ties to either Hamas, Hezbollah or Al Qaeda, according to a Washington Times report.The report is based off of documents leaked by former NSA agent Edward Snowden.These latest revelations indicate the high motivation among Islamist terrorists of various stripes to infiltrate US intelligence agencies.

Indeed, the Guardian’s coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt last year ignored the group’s long and well-documented antisemitic record (consistent with the paper’s tendency to obfuscate other groups’ extreme Judeophobia), all of which makes Giles Fraser’s recent ‘CiF’ column on the Brotherhood quite unique.Though Fraser still advanced some characteristic moral apologetics for the group, he did nonetheless include the following:”And, of course, I have no love in my heart for Islamist terrorism, nor the hateful antisemitism that is often present within the Muslim Brotherhood”

Whilst blaming the stork’s apprehension on the current mood of jingoism – in contrast, presumably, to the ‘enlightened internationalism‘ under the Muslim Brotherhood – is itself quite comical, those of us who’ve ‘covered’ previous instances of spy animals can refute the reporter’s thesis by noting other examples of Egyptian ‘xenophobia’.

So why exactly are all of the above (and quite a few more) in such a tizzy? Well the former head of the BBC News website’s Middle East desk Tarik Kafala recently moved on to become head of the BBC Arabic Service (mabrouk!) and his replacement is Raffi Berg. Mr Berg has been working at the Middle East desk for some time and apparently during last November’s ‘Operation Pillar of Cloud’ he tried to ensure that his colleagues adhered to BBC standards of accuracy by writing the following e-mails:“Please remember, Israel doesn’t maintain a blockade around Gaza. Egypt controls the southern border. Israel maintains a blockade around its borders with Gaza, as well as a naval blockade. It also controls Gaza’s airspace. We’ve mistakenly said “around Gaza” in a number of recent stories, which has generated complaints.”

An anti-Israel rally at a South African University that saw protesters chanting “Shoot the Jew,” which was subsequently defended by the head of the country’s BDS movement, drew widespread condemnation. Both backers and critics of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in South Africa criticized the group’s leader for supporting activists at the Witwatersrand University rally who sang a modified version of the 1980s anti-apartheid song “Shoot the Boer,” the Mail and Guardian reported Monday. Some members of the BDS movement, which supports a boycott of Israeli products as part of its pro-Palestinian stance, “made it clear they don’t think it’s a remotely acceptable slogan,” Prof. Steven Friedman, who teaches at both Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg — and who supports the boycott idea, in addition to calling for a one-state solution — told the news site.

I was recently pointed in the direction of a Facebook page entitled The Untold History, run by a group out of Sweden that calls itself the European Knights Project, a partner of the Institute for Historical Review. On its masthead, it proclaims in all-caps that it is a “HISTORICAL SITE NON-POLITICAL,” but this is a sham. It is, in fact, a Holocaust denial site that not only presents bogus and falsified history, but also traffics in the vilest sort of anti-Semitism.

The perpetuation of a world powered by oil is one of the most anti-Jewish actions imaginable. A world that resists transitioning quickly from oil to renewables is a world that feeds the Iranian nuclear program, promotes radical whabbiism in Saudi Arabia and around the world, accelerates extreme climate change, pollutes our air, distorts world policy against Israel, and sends American and other troops off to bloody and expensive wars in Iraq and elsewhere.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has challenged us all to imagine a world without oil and has set up within his office a special bureau investing in oil substitute strategies.

One obvious question that remains is, if solar energy can be part of the solution for Israel’s own energy needs, why can’t Israel use solar—rather than develop its shale resources—to help the world reduce its dependence on oil? The reason that approach isn’t viable is that solar can be an alternative to fuels such as coal or natural gas only to the extent that it can replace those fossil fuels for producing electrical power. But because virtually no oil is used for producing electricity in the industrialized world, solar can do nothing to replace oil. In fact, rather than being used for generating electricity, more than 60 percent of oil used worldwide is consumed, instead, to produce liquid transportation fuels (gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel), while most of the rest is used as a feedstock for manufacturing petrochemicals. So, to repeat the point: because solar cannot be used to fuel cars, trucks or buses or as the feedstock for plastics and fertilizer, it is pretty much useless when it comes to replacing oil.